The Iron Admiral: Conspiracy Read Online Free PDF Page B

drifted along a road overhung by jungle, almost like a tunnel through thick, red-green foliage.
    Ludovic stopped at the barracks, a line of prefab rooms, sparse, clean and adequate, two men to each
    room with shifts organized so that the two were on opposite rosters. Saahren pulled on the uniform, dark grey with a light grey undershirt. The trousers were tucked into short boots. The fit wasn’t bad, not that it mattered.
    He presented himself to Ludovic, who waited outside, leaning on the verandah rail. “You know, you
    look a bit like Admiral Saahren,” he said.
    Saahren snorted. “If I had a credit for every time somebody said that, I’d be pretty well off.”
    He wondered how his body double was faring, on a hunting trip in the mountains. Fleet Intelligence
    would trot him out occasionally to say some orchestrated words to the media to keep the illusion going.
    But the truth of it was that hardly anybody had given him a second glance, out of uniform in an
    improbable location.
    “Huh. True enough. They say everybody has a double somewhere. Handled one of them before?”
    Ludovic nodded at the Emson beam pistol in the holster on Saahren’s belt.
    Fleet issue, no doubt obtained illegally. “Yes.”
    “It’ll be enough for most things. Unless you have to go outside the perimeter fence. Then you’ll need one of these.” Ludovic lifted an AR70 assault rifle, also standard Fleet issue. “You’d have handled these?”
    “Yes. What’s out there to need an AR70?”
    “Ah.” Ludovic turned to a screen. “These.” A large, bipedal beast with long, strong forearms sporting three wicked-looking claws appeared. “They’re smart, they hunt in packs and we encourage them
    around the perimeter. Helps convince the workers they should stay inside the fence, know what I mean?”
    He chuckled. “Your main job here is to make sure there’s no pilfering and that the perimeter stays
    secure. Van Tongeren’s very particular about who goes where. Here’s the tunnel layout for patrols.”
    Ludovic handed him a tablet. “Come on and I’ll give you the tour.”
    Saahren attached the tablet to his belt. They walked through the settlement’s main square and up a road through the jungle to the mine’s entrance.
     
    The well-lit main access tunnel looked newly cut; or at least, newly shaved. Saahren had noticed ptorix carvings, flowing and evocative, around the door surrounds but none of their characteristic decoration was visible here. Signs on the walls gave destinations and distances; canteen three, control room point five.
    “This here’s the medical center,” Ludovic said, ushering Saahren through swinging doors. A man
    dressed in loose blue pants and shirt raised his head from a console.
    “Just showing the new man around,” Ludovic said.
    The fellow nodded and returned to his work.
    Saahren glanced around at an examination couch, sterilizing units for instruments, shelves stacked with bottles and packets. All perfectly ordinary, except for the sign on the door behind the counter that read
    ‘Authorized Personnel Only. Strictly No Admission’. “What’s in there?”
    “Pharmaceutical experiments. Technical types doing some tests on the wildlife here. Seeing if they can make some useful drugs.” Ludovic shrugged. “Though what you could get out of karteks and thranxes is
    beyond me. Anyway, you don’t have to worry about this place unless somebody tries to get in there
    without permission. The sick rooms are down there.” He gestured at a short passage.
    Back in the main drive, Ludovic showed Saahren the tunnels leading to the external exit, the hangar, the equipment bays where the excavators were kept and the entrance to the deep mine where all miners
    were routinely searched. They moved on to the store room.
    “The biggest risk is in here,” Ludovic said as they walked between shelves holding lights, diggers,
    clothing, boots, ropes, clamps. “We don’t want pilfering.”
    Ludovic stopped in front of